North Vernon, IN – Members of the Illinois National Guard based in Macomb and Monmouth joined more than 2,000 others for drills in rescue techniques.
Joining them in the Homeland Security exercise were more than 800 civilian first-responders, including police, firefighters and medical personnel.
Using the 2,000 acre campus of a former mental hospital, they practiced rope work and taking victims out of rubble piles.
Special units included the trailers of the civil support team, which is a set of trailers making up a mobile field analysis laboratory that can detect radiation, poisons or bacterial agents.
The Monmouth unit specializes in rope rescue work. Members lowered "patients" from the roof of a five-story building down the outside to the ground.